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Friday, January 5, 2018

MY TREES FOR LOUISE

Wishing everyone a very Happy New Year and Many Blessings for 2018.

Working in Louise's journal themed TREES, I, at first, couldn't think of what to do...yep, the theme was right there for me but I wanted some sort of different trees, something that showed a little dimension...I ended looking at so many pictures of trees that my mind became waterlogged and I lost my creative urge and this then put me in a slump to actually get something, anything on the page. So over the course of about two weeks I slowly started to work in Louise's journal...

I decided to split the pages up and use the right hand side of the larger page for this spread below. I put a layer of paint on the background and then softly sketched the tree I wanted. I used a brown and cream paint to paint in the trunk and branches of the tree and cut a leaf shape from a kitchen sponge and used a few shades of green to paint the leaves. I was very happy with the way the leaves were progressing but the tree trunk and branches were way to plain so I decided to use hot glue on them and add some texture. A light shading of gold paint on the trunk when the glue dried and a trace around some of the leaves with a white signo andit bought my tree to life.

I re-sized and cut my sitting person out of a piece of patterned paper, placed her under the tree, added a little shade and then finished it off with the saying...

"SOMEONE IS SITTING IN THE SHADE TODAY

BECAUSE SOMEONE PLANTED A TREE A LONG TIME AGO."

-Warren Buffet-

Below is a close up of the texture using the hot glue.....I so love it!!! lol

I started on the left hand side of the page roughly the same way as the right side. Put a layer of paint in the background, sketched a tree, in a different style and the painted the tree in.For the texture on this trunk I used some wood shavings, gluing them onto the trunk and branches. Now for the leaves, something total different...I went with these awesome tealy coloured feathers. Watching leaves fall from trees reminds me of delicate, soft feathers, yep, so why not use these feathers for the leaves.

It also added another texture, a softer one, to my layout. I went over the background but the right side bottom of the page looked too plain so I added some stamped images of trees and then the saying by Robert Louis Stevenson. I really love the outcome of this layout.

Below a close up of the textures using the wood chips and feathers...really cool!!!!

This only left the little flap on the left side... and as I am still a sort of silhouette frame of mind, I decided to go with a dark full moon night and just stamp a tree image on the page using a stazon ink. A very simple but effective layout. I glued the word GROW down the bottom and called my flappage finished.

I hope you are pleased with my work in your journal Louise, after finding it hard to get started, I ended up having fun trying out some different textured materials for the tree trunks. You can also view the video of my process below...Thank you xox